Agencies/New Delhi

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh warned Pakistan yesterday against “anti-India activity” as tensions rise between the neighbours over a deadly attack on Indian soldiers.
“India has always strived for friendship with its neighbouring countries,” Singh said in an annual address marking India’s 1947 independence from Britain delivered from the ramparts of the historic Red Fort in New Delhi.
“However, for relations with Pakistan to improve, it is essential they prevent the use of their territory and territory under their control for any anti-India activity,” Singh said.
The prime minister spoke from a bullet-proof enclosure at the Red Fort, which had been turned into a virtual fortress with tens of thousands of security forces guarding against a possible militant strike.
India blamed the killing of five of its soldiers in Jammu and Kashmir last week on the Pakistan army and the incident has fuelled tensions between the neighbours.
Singh condemned the attack as “dastardly” and said New Delhi would “take all possible steps to prevent” future such incidents, as intermittent firing continued along the heavily militarised ceasefire line dividing Kashmir.
India’s army accused Pakistan troops of injuring three Indian soldiers in yesterday’s firing between the two armies along the boundary known as the Line of Control, according to the Press Trust of India news agency.
Islamabad has denied involvement of its soldiers in last week’s ambush, one of the deadliest in years targeting Indian troops in Kashmir.
Pakistan’s new Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif pledged on Wednesday to respond to the intensifying friction with “restraint and responsibility.”
But the renewed tensions have jeopardised plans for what the two governments hoped might be a breakthrough encounter between Singh and Sharif on the sidelines of a UN meeting in New York next month.
Making his last independence day speech ahead of next year’s elections, Singh detailed the achievements of the Congress-led government since it first took power in 2004.
He presented the big picture, placing emphasis on the government’s successes, detailing what more could be achieved and admitting to some weak areas.
He said in no other decade had India seen such economic development as in the past 10 years - when the United Progressive Alliance was in power.
The economist-turned-politician admitted that India’s growth rate had fallen to 5%. “We are trying our best to remedy the situation... I believe this phase of slow growth in India will not last long.”
India, he said, grew in the last nine years at an annual average rate of 7.9%. He called the pace “the highest in any decade.”
The prime minister spoke of the country’s economic prosperity propelled by record food-grain production in 2011-12 and stressed the importance of the Food Security Bill, recently tabled in the parliament, that would benefit 75% of rural on and half of urban population.
If this law is enacted, 810mn Indians would be entitled to receive rice at Rs3 per kg, wheat at Rs2 per kg and coarse grains at Re1 per kg. This is the largest effort of its kind in the whole world, he said.
 Even as he listed his achievements, Singh admitted that much remained to be done to reform India’s educational system.